Women's Basketball Jeff Faraudo, WCC Columnist

Optimism High For WCC Women's Hoops Teams

LAS VEGAS — Barely six months after West Coast Conference women’s basketball enjoyed its most productive postseason, momentum and optimism within the league remain strong.

“It’s a hard league. It’s a beast,” Santa Clara coach Bill Carr said Wednesday at the WCC Tip-Off event at the Orleans Arena. “This league’s not dropping.”

A record-tying six WCC women’s teams advanced to the postseason and Gonzaga and BYU each won games in the NCAA tournament, the first time the conference has achieved that. The WCC’s final RPI ranking was No. 7, a lofty position among 32 Division I conferences.

And while six of 10 first-team All-WCC selections from a year ago have moved on, Gonzaga coach Lisa Fortier believes the conference remains stacked with talent. A lot of it resides in Spokane, because the Bulldogs were picked by the league’s coaches to defend their regular-season title.

“It might be a transition year,” Fortier said, referring to personnel turnover throughout the league, including on her roster where three first-team all-conference players are gone. “But I don’t think it’s a rebuilding year for our league.”

WCC tournament champ BYU was picked second in the coach’s poll and Pacific, which has finished no higher than a tie for fifth over the past four seasons, was tabbed No. 3 over perennial 20-game winner Saint Mary’s, indicative of the league’s growing depth.

“I think everybody in conference has gotten better, and I think those of us four through 10 the last few years are always wanting to take a crack of them,” Pacific coach Bradley Davis said.

Still, Gonzaga, an NCAA tournament participant 11 of the past 13 seasons, remains the WCC’s elite program.

USF coach Molly Goodenbour believes Gonzaga’s “culture of winning” may account for as many as 20 percent of their victories. Her perspective is particularly valid, having played on two Stanford teams that won NCAA championships.

“They’ve earned that respect from the rest of us,” Goodenbour said.

Here’s more from the WCC Tip-Off event:

— Consensus opinion is that BYU might have been picked as the preseason favorite except that point guard Shaylee Gonzales — a first-team All-WCC pick last season as a freshman — sustained a torn ACL last summer that will put her on the shelf for the season.

“She’s phenomenal,” Gonzaga’s Fortier said.

“Best player in the league, potentially, USF’s Goodenbour called her.

— The WCC’s two new head coaches — Pepperdine’s Kristen Dowling and Portland’s Michael Meeks — have some history. Dowling’s Claremont Mudd-Scripps team and Meeks’ George Fox University squad have squared off at least three or four times at the Division III level.

Dowling is still waiting to beat Meeks for the first time.

“We got the best of the matchups we’ve had so far,” Meeks said,  but anything can happen on a given night.”

— USF’s Goodenbour calls sophomore wing Abby Rathbun “the toughest player I’ve ever coached.”

And with good reason, considering Rathbun grew up on her family’s 1,200-acre cattle ranch in Moses Lake, Wash. Abby was just a youngster when her father gave her responsibility for bottle-feeding a calf that didn’t have a mother.

There were feedings morning and night. “At night you don’t want to go out there because you hear the coyotes and you’re a little scared as a four-year-old out there walking by yourself and shivering,” she said. “But you have to show up every day. It’s the same thing in basketball.”

— Gonzaga’s Katie Campbell led the WCC in 3-point accuracy last season, making 45 percent of her attempts. It’s a skill she developed playing H-O-R-S-E against her dad and brother on the driveway of the family’s Southern California home.

“My form was really ugly and I shot with two hands, but it went in,” said Campbell, who recalled beating her brother Collin for the first time when she was in just the fifth or sixth grade. “He think he’s a better shooter. He's the older brother, so when I beat him he was so angry.”

— The best things I heard today:

“I was asking girls to pay $75,000 a year to come play basketball. Now we have full scholarships.” — First-year Pepperdine coach Kristen Dowling on one of the differences from coaching at Claremont Mudd-Scripps, a non-scholarship Division III program.

“I think our team would have been OK. In practice everyone shoots behind the men’s line because we get confused.” — Saint Mary’s junior guard Maddy Holland on the NCAA extending the men's 3-point arc to the international distance of 22 feet, 1 3/4 inches, while keeping the women’s line at 20-9.

“If I want to score it’s got to be in my hands and there’s no easier way than to get a steal and a layup. Keep it old school.” — Pacific junior guard Val Higgins, the reigning WCC Defensive Player of the Year on why she excels at that end of the court.

“Some days we forget we were there for basketball. Our coaches and the staff made it so great to enjoy the experience.” — Senior Katie Campbell on Gonzaga’s summer tour of Spain and Italy, where the Bulldogs saw lots of great stuff but also won all four of their games.